The contentious history of Mao-era policies requiring cadres to participate in labor and workers to participate in management

During the Mao era in China, factory leaders, managers, and technicians were required to participate in manual labor and workers were required to participate in management. The declared purpose of these “two participations” policies was to diminish the differences between mental and manual labor. In Marxist theory, this gap was a fundamental feature of class societies, and closing the gap became one of the key goals of the radical class-leveling agenda pursued by the Chinese Communist Party after the 1949 Revolution. As was pointed out in the introduction to this special issue, the CCP took this agenda more seriously than other communist parties that came to power in the 20th century. Based on an analysis of articles published in the People’s Daily (the party’s flagship newspaper) as well as interviews with workers and cadres employed in industrial enterprises during the Mao and early Reform eras, this paper investigates the contentious goals, policies, practices, and institutions associated with these two slogans. Our analysis reveals accomplishments but also demonstrates the profound challenges this endeavor entailed. We find that the distinctions between mental and manual labor proved to be a far more resilient foundation of class hierarchies than property ownership.